Friday Freebie

The back of your neck is dimpled with cold sweat, your stomach aches with want and your head feels like Mötley Crüe just had a particularly debauched party in there and didn't bother to clean up afterwards. This can only mean one thing: it's been seven days since your last freebie fix.

Well never fear, fellow freeloaders, as this week we have something for everyone.

One thing we've not had in a long time is a web-based DS demo and this example of Arkanoid may very well be one of the last as the imminent arrival of the Wii DS demo channel looms. In the wake of reasonably positive reviews of Nervous Brickdown, Taito has seen fit to bring another popular Breakout clone franchise to the DS and based on the handful of levels available in the demo, Arkanoid is solid if predictable fun. A generous helping of levels (but only one life) should help you to stave off boredom for a good half hour at least.

Freebie entertainment of a much more enduring kind graces the PSP this week, though, with some free legal eBooks. There are all sorts of ways to get eBooks onto your PSP, the easiest being to download them in ready-to-use PSP format directly from manybooks.com, which we have covered before (but is worth a re-visit as it is updated with new titles regularly).

Another way, however, is to use the very handy conversion tool JPEGBook, available for free download here. Essentially, this Windows program converts any Plain Text file into a series of JPEGs that can be easily viewed on the PSP. And to go with it, a good resource for eBooks in Plain Text format is Project Gutenberg, which has something in the region of 100,000 virtual volumes in its archives.

All you need to do is find a title you want to read on the site, check that it's available in Plain Text format and then click on the appropriate link. In Firefox and Internet Explorer, the eBook will open in your PC's browser, after which you just click on file 'save as' and specify a suitable location. Then it is just a matter of converting the file via JPEGBook and moving it over to your PSP's PHOTO folder via USB.

We managed to snaffle Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and Kurt Vonnegut's 2 B R 0 2 B in a matter of minutes. The JPEGBook software is very user friendly but if any of you get stuck, let us know either in the comments section or in the forum and we will do our best to help out.

Last of all this week, one of our helpful forum members (thanks pl_pirate) has pointed us in the direction of various sites amounting to a treasure trove of free legal mobile games.

Perhaps the most notable of the bunch is ZEDGE, an ad funded effort with plenty reasonably up to date titles, including Townsmen 4, Governator 2 and My Model Train.

Okay, that's it for this week. Remember, if you can't make this clutch last for seven days, the Freebie Archive is always worth a look. And click 'Track It!' to be sure not to miss next week's Friday Freebie.